Which Witch Switch - Julie Steimle (book series for 10 year olds .txt) 📗

lay on my back on a cot there for the rest of lunch hour amid Danna’s shrill protests for me to get better fast so I could attend sixth period, along with the nurse’s own remarks that there was nothing wrong with me. Danna left me just after the nurse promised to take me to my sixth hour. I was really starting to hate her.

As I rested, my mind floating in a space of nothingness, I listened to the commotion of imps inside the office shouting weird things for the nurse to do to me, and those of the imps outside with the usual commotion. For some reason it was like a lullaby, and I nearly drifted off to sleep.

Nearly, because someone stumbled into the room with imps that shouted for him to bite the school nurse, and that was the weirdest thing I had heard all day.

“I heard the transfer student was brought in here a minute ago,” a familiar boy’s voice said.

The nurse turned, her imp shouting for her to grab a hold of his hair and pull on it to get some out. “You can’t come in here.”

I opened my eyes, sitting up. This school was full of really weird people.

“What?” He snorted. “It’s not allowed for people like me?”

Blinking, I focused my eyes on the rust-haired boy in the doorway whom I could see through the gaps in the curtain. Immediately, I hopped off the cot and threw back the curtain. “Rick!”

My old friend, Rick Deacon, turned and exhaled with relief, setting a hand to his chest. “Eve, what in the world are you doing here? Abey told me he saw you this morning in one of his classes, but I didn’t believe it. But then Jess said you were in gym with her.”

I blinked again and stared at him. It wasn’t a very friendly greeting. I shrugged and took another step closer to him. “What do you mean what am I doing here? What are you doing here? I thought you lived somewhere on the East Coast.”

“This is the East Coast!” he snapped, looking almost wolfish in his protest.

Blinking once more, I set a hand to my head. “I’m on the East Coast?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“You mean I’m in your home town?” I then stared around at the room.

The nurse retreated to a cabinet near the wall, reaching over to it.

Rick nodded again. “Yeah. You are. How did you get here?”

I swayed on my feet.

“I don’t know. The last thing I remember was being with Jane at a homecoming committee activity. We were making posters and then…” My vision went somewhat cloudy, and that cobwebby feeling tried to cling to and cover my thoughts, but somehow because I had retched up all that stuff, my head was eighty percent clearer and I was able to toss them off. “…I blacked out. The next thing I know I’m waking up in a weird old house with that woman that came up to Jane and me at school. Mr. McDillan had frightened her—”

“Probably because he is a monster hunter,” Rick said with a nod. “Those guys are anti-witches.”

I nodded. “Yeah. That’s what Travis and the rest figured out. But, why am I here again?”

I swayed once more. Rick caught me. It was good too because if I had fallen the other way I would have landed into the nurse who unexpectedly jerked up a strange smelling thing that made Rick yelp like a puppy and duck behind me.

“Back wolf!” The nurse stuck it in front of us both.

As Rick fell back, I regained my footing and grabbed the thing the nurse was dangling in front of us, baring my teeth. “Stop it!”

She retreated, but did not let go of what she was holding. I didn’t let go either.

“Give me that!” I jerked on it.

No effect. She set her feet for a struggle, her fingernails tightening like claws. “You are consorting with the enemy!”

“Enemy?” I growled, my eyes turning red. “Rick is my friend!”

My wings tore out of the back of the top Danna had loaned me. I flapped up as my fingernails extended into thick claws and wrenched the lump of whatever that was making Rick flinch from her hands. Then I tossed it out of the window, sticking my hand right through the glass without breaking it.

“What are you doing?” She shouted at me, chasing the lump of stuff, running smack against the closed window. “That’s the only thing besides garlic that can keep that monster back!”

I clenched my fists, landing on the ground, and retracted my wings into my back. “Don’t call him a monster.”

Her eyes went wide as she stared at me.

I turned my back on her and stomped out of the room with Rick who had practically fled from there.

Rick escorted me down the hall then straight into another hall into a recessed doorway where we would have some privacy. Already people were going to their next class. Some even whistled when they saw me with Rick, thinking we were going someplace to make out.

He dug into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, handing it to me. “Ok, Eve. I need you to call your Mom. I told her I’d look for you, but she’ll want to hear from you first.”

Blinking, I nodded and then leaned back against the wall to remember my home phone number. It wasn’t coming out easy. In fact I held the cell phone for a while just trying to recall it.

“Oh, for heaven sakes! Let me dial!” Rick took the phone back and punched in the numbers. Then he listened for a tone. “I can’t believe they got a hold of you. The last time I saw you, you were always on your guard.”

I shrugged. “Maybe they’re smarter than me.”

“You should be really angry, Eve!” He snapped at me, but then he turned his attention to the cell phone. “Hi! Mrs. McAllister? This is Rick Deacon. I found her. She’s right here.”

He put the phone in my hand. I set it to my ear and listened. “Mom?”

<< Eve! Are you ok? >>

I blinked, tears suddenly forming in my eyes though I didn’t know why. “I don’t know. My head is all fuzzy. I can’t think clearly.”

My mother choked on a sob on the other end. Hearing it, my tears came out more. << Oh, my poor baby. What did they do to you? >>

Setting my hand to my head, I pressed between my eyes, and tried to think. “I’m not sure. They gave me something to drink that—”

But somebody ripped the phone right out of my hands. I whipped around to get it back. “Hey!”

In front of me stood Danna, Rick’s phone in one hand as she folded her arms and tapped her foot. She cocked her head with an irritable glare on me. “Why didn’t you tell me you were friends with Howie Deacon?”

Rick stomped towards her to get his phone back as my mother shouted through it. “That’s mine!”

Two other girls walked over and stood next to Danna, dangling sachets of what I figured were more of that weird stuff the nurse had because Rick sprang back from them like a wounded dog.

I shoved between them and reached for the phone myself. “Give it back.”

Danna blinked her long mascara coated lashes at me with an abrupt laugh, pressing the off button. “No.”

“I was talking to my mother!” I snapped.

“I know,” she said. Then she reached out her arm, pointing her long manicured nail at me, and touched me in the forehead, drawing a symbol as she muttered words before saying. “You will come with me now. We are going back to the house.”

It was like a wool blanket out of nowhere pulled over my head. I could not see. My legs were weak and all the determination and anger that I been feeling were smothered. I could hardly speak, even as I said, “Ok.”

“Not ok!” Rick seized the back of my shirt and pulled me away from Danna. “Eve! You have to snap out of this! They are trying to use you to kill the Seven!”

Hearing his voice, I stirred back into consciousness, though barely.

“You said you didn’t want to do that.” He turned me around.

“I don’t,” I murmured looking back at his kind and rather cute face.

Danna snorted and took hold of my shoulder to pull me back. “Yes, you do. You were born to destroy the Seven.”

I swayed, but I also shook my head. “I don’t care.”

“What?” all three girls said in chorus.

Rick burst into laughter. “I knew it! Even under their spell you are still the same Eve.”

“No!” Danna shoved Rick off, using that weird sachet to drive him off, forcing herself between us. “You—”

But just then a passing teacher told us to get to class. The bell had already run. In a daze, I started to go, though Danna pulled me aside and said to the teacher, “I need to bring her home. She threw up at lunch.”

“Go to the office first and get a pass,” the teacher replied with a tired nod.

Danna tried to steer me through the crowd but there were still people getting in the way. We didn’t even make it out of the hall.

“There you are! Rick, we’ve been looking everywhere for—” Jessica marched right up to him but halted when she saw me. “Eve! Are you ok?”

Others came into the hall after her: the tall redhead Andrew, Daniel, James and the three others that I had seen before. All of them stared at us, Andrew walking up to Rick though he also looked at me as I sort of just stood there, still in a daze.

“All of you, go to class!” the teacher snapped, a tick starting in his left eye. “Now!”

“Not yet, Mr. Hannover,” Andrew said. He turned to face Danna. “We’re here on business.”

“You are in school!” that teacher shouted at the boy. “Your business doesn’t belong here!”

Andrew pointed right at me with that long freckled arm of his. “It does when our business comes to this school looking for us.”

Mr. Hannover turned and peered right at me. My head was still spinning, and I had a glazed look in my eyes. I wasn’t wearing my sunglasses. He flinched then retreated.

In the next moment nearly everyone seized a piece of me and started pulling. The hands of eleven teenagers found a part of my arms or legs to latch on to. By this time the hall was vacant except for the three witches, Rick, and the seven weird teenagers.

Seven.

A tremor of horror washed over me. My wings tore out of my back, knocking everyone off. I launched from the ground and flapped hard. In one gust, I was up, going through the ceiling as I also went invisible. I emerged on the second floor in the middle of a classroom though no one in that room saw me or felt a gust from my wings as I flapped more to take me even higher. I shot straight up through that ceiling onto the third floor, then the fourth and then to the roof. There I stopped, landing on the tarpaper and gravel, catching my breath.

My heart thundered in my chest.

What was wrong with me? Why did I freak out? But even as I asked myself those questions, the answers floated though my foggy mind and told me it was because those seven teenagers were the very Holy Seven I was born to kill. And if I didn’t kill them, then they were destined to kill me.

I didn’t like either choice. It didn’t seem fair that there wasn’t another option. Kill or be killed repeated in my mind, though my gut kept saying let’s just forget the whole thing. I liked listening to that gut feeling. So I did.

Inside me, the desperate need to simply fly away overthrew the other sensations, and a little wind under my wings felt like a good thing. The only question I had then was where I ought to go?

“Eve!”

I